The Gandhian Adventures of Raj & Iqbal: A Novel

H
ello hello good morning. RK here. How are you all? Me, I am fine. I am sitting here writing to you all so that everyone can understand what has happened with us. Oh, sorry. Now Iqbal is poking me and saying I am taking up all the attention. But I warned him this would happen when we made the agreement. The agreement that whoever does the typing work, he gets to put his name first. Okay fine, he is poking me again so I will introduce him. I will introduce my brother.

Iqbal is my brother in life. Iqbal Ali Mohammad Khan. But call him Iqbal. And call me RK, short for Raj Kumar. Raj Kumar Reddy.

We are both Gandhians. Peace-lovers. Lovers of peace. We are true Gandhians. At least true in spirit and intention if not yet in body and action. You see, I only say that because when we ultimately finished reading the full autobiography of Bapu, we realized that to be true Gandhians we must also be the Brahmacharis. Means what? Means that we must let go of the sexual desire. Let that energy be diverted into the eternal quest for the truth.

So we told this to our wives. First they laughed at us. But now . . . actually now they still laugh at us. Because after we made this pledge we experienced increase in urges to do the opposite. It is the funny reaction like how if a child has not played with a toy for a long time and you try and take the toy away then immediately the child wants to play only with that toy. Now every day the wives laugh and say they are getting more bedroom action than ever before. It seems this pledge of celibacy has backfired in a not displeasurable way. But never mind. It is part of the challenge, we believe. After all, Bapu himself did not overcome the challenge until almost forty years of age. And we are not yet forty. Still one or two or three more years until that age. So we have time to meet this challenge.

But anyway. That challenge is not the reason we are writing this. Naturally we will update you on our progress to Brahmachari in case others find inspiration. But the true reason for writing down our stories is not such a personal business. It is a public matter. It is a matter of utmost seriousness and importance. It is a matter of the highest truth.

Let us explain how this thing started.

All big things start as small things. Okay okay, maybe not all things. Some things may start big only. But anyway, this is not one of those things that started big. It started small, and then got bigger. Make no mistake, we made no mistake. Our intention only was to start small and then get big. But what seemed small at first was bigger than we thought. Then, as we proceeded, what we thought was big suddenly became massive. Massive, I tell you.

And that is why we must put down everything on paper. And using English, even though Hindi or Urdu would be more poetic to our own minds. Iqbal is nodding. We could write this in Hindi or Urdu, does not matter which. Both are sister languages. Sisters, like we are brothers. But we must write with English because these matters are bigger than us. They are bigger than Mumbai. They are bigger than Maharashtra. They are bigger than India. They are massive. Massive, I tell you.

But of course we must start with the small thing. The small thing that began us on our Gandhian adventures.

Any Gandhian adventure can only have a single item as the goal. Truth is that item. Truth is that goal. The whole point of being a Gandhian is to pursue the truth wherever she may lie. Or he. Whatever gender the truth is. And wherever he or she may be hiding. Actually it is better we think of truth as genderless. So to rephrase in genderless language: As Gandhians we are automatically dedicated to the pursuit of truth wherever it may be hiding or whatever it is.

This seemed like a simple and honorable goal, and so me and Iqbal were happy. But then one day Iqbal joined me for tea and he put on a very worried face. I asked him what is wrong, and he said that how can we say we are pursuing truth if we do nothing but drink tea and go to office for eight hours and drink tea and eat dinner and love our families? And since last year our children are also away from home and now living in college hostels. And so, Iqbal said with his worried face, how can we say we are in pursuit of truth?

So I said the problem is the word pursuit. If we say pursuit, then we must pursue. And if we are not pursuing, then we cannot say we are in pursuit.

And then Iqbal smiled and said yes, that is the problem.

So I said should we change the word? Should we replace the word pursuit with a less active word? Perhaps we say our goal is the acceptance, not pursuit, of truth. That way we can drink tea and go to office and drink tea and eat food and love our wives. And when the truth comes, we will simply accept it.

Iqbal stopped smiling and said no. I did not ask him why because I knew why. Iqbal and me are brothers in life after all. Our thought patterns are one and the same.

So before the tea had even cooled we had made the decision. To pursue the truth wherever it is hiding means only one thing. It means we must go out and look for it. Look for the truth. If the truth is hiding, then it must be found. And as Gandhians it is our sworn duty to find the truth. Indeed, as Gandhians it is our only duty.

And so this small realization, this small thing that came to us even before the tea had cooled, this was the beginning. The beginning of our Gandhian adventures.